Impaired Probability Estimation and Decision-Making in Pathological Gambling Poker Players

Poker has gained tremendous popularity in recent years, increasing the risk for some individuals to develop pathological gambling. Here, we investigated cognitive biases in a computerized two-player poker task against a fictive opponent, among 12 pathological gambling poker players (PGP), 10 experienced poker players (ExP), and 11 inexperienced poker players (InP). Players were compared on probability estimation and decision-making with the hypothesis that ExP would have significantly lower cognitive biases than PGP and InP, and that the groups could be differentiated based on their cognitive bias styles. The results showed that ExP had a significantly lower average error margin in probability estimation than PGP and InP, and that PGP played hands with lower winning probability than ExP. Binomial logistic regression showed perfect differentiation (100%) between ExP and PGP, and 90.5% classification accuracy between ExP and InP. Multinomial logistic regression showed an overall classification accuracy of 23 out of 33 (69.7%) between the three groups. The classification accuracy of ExP was higher than that of PGP and InP due to the similarities in probability estimation and decision-making between PGP and InP. These impairments in probability estimation and decision-making of PGP may have implications for assessment and treatment of cognitive biases in pathological gambling poker players.     

Ideologies and Forms of Domination in the Organization of the Global Production and Consumption of Goods in the Emerging Postmodern Era: A Case Study of Nike Corporation and the Implications for Gender

This paper uses a case study of Nike Corporation to examine some of the contradictory gender-based ideologies involved in the two main processes of the production and consumption of athletic footwear: manufacturing and advertising. It uses the newly developing paradigm within world-system theory, a commodity chain analysis, to compare and contrast the social relations of gender within each of these two segments at both the micro- and macro-level. Noting the increasing importance of advertising and consumption patterns accompanying emerging post-industrial, postmodern trends, this paper highlights the need for political economy analyses to address more cautiously cultural, political and social factors involved in the production and consumption of goods. This study employs an exploratory approach, using gender as a variable to detect linkages between the economic and cultural realms at the individual and global level. Drawing on some of the post-Marxist literature, it points to new potential for alliances in forging social change. The main attempt is to expand upon development theory which tends to neglect the role of gender, while also expanding studies of gender by investigating gender issues within the framework of the global political economy.     

Money in remarriage: keeping things simple – and separate

This paper investigates money matters in remarried couples. The number of such couples is on the increase, and their financial affairs are likely to be more complex and conflictual than for first-married couples, but there has been little research attention paid to this group in Britain. The present study explores patterns of control and management of money by means of data from semi-structured interviews with 20 couples in which one partner or both had been married before. The men and women were interviewed separately, but in the majority of cases, simultaneously, in separate rooms. This yielded data from 38 interviews since two men declined to take part in the study. Ages of respondents ranged from 28 to 83, with the majority in the 30–55 range. At the time of the study, only half still had dependent children, and not all of the latter were co-resident. A key finding of the study is a degree of separateness in financial arrangements that is in sharp contrast to earlier findings. As many as half of the couples were using an Independent Management system, compared with less than 2 per cent of couples in general. For those with children from previous relationships, this separateness was especially marked in the way they wished their assets to be treated after their death. However, in line with earlier studies, the balance of economic power in second and subsequent marriages still appeared to favour the men, who generally had larger incomes and owned more assets in their own names.     

The many faces of sociology: Ambivalence and conflict in graduate education

This article addresses how the ambivalence of the discipline of sociology affects students’ understanding of it. We consider this ambivalence as multi-layered. The first level embodies the usefulness of sociology as a discipline and sociologists’ ambivalence toward their profession. The second involves applying a sociological perspective to our everyday lives. We discuss the administrative organization of our department, the examination structure, and the structure of asymetric power relations. We conclude that one possible solution toward resolving ambivalences both in our everyday lives and within the profession is to take our critical theoretical training seriously. with special interests in social psychology and qualitative research. She is planning a dissertation on how ideology affects the structure of battered women’s shelters. Barbara G. Brents is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Missouri with special interests in political economy and aging. She currently is working on a dissertation entitled “The Class Politics of Age: The Social Security Act of 1935.”     

Gender, race-ethnicity, and psychosocial barriers to mental health care: an examination of perceptions and attitudes among adults reporting unmet need

Though researchers have described psychosocial barriers to mental health care-seeking, limited research has examined ways in which gender and race-ethnicity are associated with individuals' perceptions and attitudes. This study investigates correlates of psychosocial barriers to mental health care in a population of adults reporting unmet need for mental health care, focusing on gender and race-ethnicity. Data are from the 2002 National Survey on Drug Use and Health. Multivariate analyses show that non-Latino white male status is positively associated with stigma avoidance and mistrust/fear of the mental health care system. Persons of lower income or educational status are less likely to report negative attitudes towards care. Findings imply a need to reconsider the roles of gender race-ethnicity, and socioeconomic status within investigations of psychosocial barriers to care. Future research should examine the relationships among social status, help-seeking behaviors, and attitudes toward mental health care.     

Bourdieu and organizational analysis

Despite some promising steps in the right direction, organizational analysis has yet to exploit fully the theoretical and empirical possibilities inherent in the writings of Pierre Bourdieu. While certain concepts associated with his thought, such as field and capital, are already widely known in the organizational literature, the specific ways in which these terms are being used provide ample evidence that the full significance of his relational mode of thought has yet to be sufficiently apprehended. Moreover, the almost complete inattention to habitus, the third of Bourdieu’s major concepts, without which the concepts of field and capital (at least as he deployed them) make no sense, further attests to the misappropriation of his ideas and to the lack of appreciation of their potential usefulness. It is our aim in this paper, by contrast, to set forth a more informed and comprehensive account of what a relational – and, in particular, a Bourdieu-inspired – agenda for organizational research might look like. Accordingly, we examine the implications of his theoretical framework for interorganizational relations, as well as for organizations themselves analyzed as fields. The primary advantage of such an approach, we argue, is the central place accorded therein to the social conditions under which inter- and intraorganizational power relations are produced, reproduced, and contested. Emirbayer and Johnson are equal co-authors of this article

---

Measurement and correlates of prosocial bystander behavior: the case of interpersonal violence

The field of social psychology has long investigated the role of prosocial bystanders in assisting crime victims and helping in emergency situations. This research has usually been experimental and has established important principles about the conditions under which individuals will choose to engage in prosocial bystander behaviors. More recently, interest has grown in applying this work to the important practical problem of preventing interpersonal violence in communities. Yet, to date, there has been little research on the role of bystanders in cases of interpersonal violence. The current study is thus exploratory. Using a sample of 389 undergraduates, the study discusses key issues in the development of measures to investigate these questions and presents preliminary analyses of correlates of bystander behavior in the context of sexual and intimate partner violence.     

Are Private Schools Better Than Public Schools? Appraisal for Ireland by Methods for Observational Studies

In observational studies the assignment of units to treatments is not under control. Consequently, the estimation and comparison of treatment effects based on the empirical distribution of the responses can be biased since the units exposed to the various treatments could differ in important unknown pretreatment characteristics, which are related to the response. An important example studied in this article is the question of whether private schools offer better quality of education than public schools. In order to address this question we use data collected in the year 2000 by OECD for the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). Focusing for illustration on scores in mathematics of 15-years old pupils in Ireland, we find that the raw average score of pupils in private schools is higher than of pupils in public schools. However, application of a newly proposed method for observational studies suggests that the less able pupils tend to enroll in public schools, such that their lower scores is not necessarily an indication of bad quality of the public schools. Indeed, when comparing the average score in the two types of schools after adjusting for the enrollment effects, we find quite surprisingly that public schools perform better on average. This outcome is supported by the methods of instrumental variables and latent variables, commonly used by econometricians for analyzing and evaluating social programs.     

What's sex got to do with it? A family‐based investigation of growing up heterosexual during the twentieth century

This paper explores findings from a cross-generational study of the making of heterosexual relationships in East Yorkshire, which has interviewed women and men within extended families. Using a feminist perspective, it examines the relationship between heterosexuality and adulthood, focussing on sexual attraction, courtship, first kisses, first love and first sex, as mediated within family relationships, and at different historical moments. In this way, the contemporary experiences of young people growing up are compared and contrasted with those of mid-lifers and older adults who formed heterosexual relationships within the context of the changing social and sexual mores of the 1960s/1970s, and the upheavals of World War Two.